As our country faces the threat of the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen a flurry of government policy measures to address the crisis, including £330 billion of loans to businesses and a commitment to pay 80% of workers’ wages. However the funding made available for local government, one of the key institutions in providing local services to address the crisis, has been negligible to date.

After decades of cuts, outsourcing, and the centralisation of powers in the hands of executives, most councils find themselves lacking the funding, infrastructure, or the community relationships to adequately address the challenges of Covid-19. Meanwhile, mutual aid groups have been established by volunteers in most councils, boldly organising to deliver support to vulnerable people. Amid all of this, Momentum’s Councillor Network, a growing network of Momentum councillors and councillor candidates, has been meeting to develop national and local responses. The network has agreed on five core demands that should guide councillors in their response to the crisis. 

1. Give councils the powers they need to protect the vulnerable

Councillors have direct contact with people affected, or likely to be affected, by Covid-19. They are on the frontline of supporting those most vulnerable, and yet their budgets have been slashed for a decade. The chancellor’s recent measures demonstrate that the government has grasped the basic point that working people need major support to weather this crisis. However, the Conservative government has never put working-class people first, and there is no reason to believe it will do so now. Sunak’s measures have still failed to prevent companies from laying off workers, left the 5 week wait for universal credit and benefit sanctions intact, retained Statutory Sick Pay at a derisory level and failed to suspend rent payments. At the same time the Coronavirus Bill will remove the obligation of councils to support vulnerable groups and leave thousands of disabled and elderly people without the care they need. Councils should be given more power to fight this crisis, not less, and Labour councillors need to continuously draw attention to the limitations of existing measures, fight the corner of vulnerable groups, and push for solutions that set the ground for a universal social security approach.

2. Set up an emergency pandemic fund for councils

To date, the amount of government funding made available to councils to address the crisis has been totally inadequate, as Nick Forbes, leader of Local Government Association for Labour, has pointed out. Given the Bank of England have announced created £200 billion of quantitative easing to soothe bond markets, Labour councillors should have no hesitation in demanding that the government set up an emergency pandemic fund to cover the cost of measures necessary to reduce the burden on working people, including the freezing of council tax, business rates and council rents. Crucially, local councils should demand autonomy over the spending of these funds, in order to prevent any further centralisation of the state. 

3. Support local public ownership to tackle the pandemic 

Financial commitments without the creation of institutions to strengthen working people are easily reversible, and risk subsidising dysfunctional private sector actors. While at the national level, Labour must demand stakes in major companies requiring bailouts (such as aviation), the same principle applies at the local level too. With support from the national Government, councils can play an active role in establishing ‘meals-on-wheels’ services as part of a national public food distribution system, requisitioning unused buildings to house the homeless and establish additional support services, buying back private housing, and bringing outsourced areas of council provision back inhouse. 

4. Ensure our council response is transparent and community-led 

In recent decades, councils have become progressively centralised in the hands of strong executives and officers, with backbenchers, Labour Party members, and community groups shut out from key decision-making. The Covid-19 crisis has the potential to create impetus towards further centralisation, as officers rapidly attempt to respond under pressure and with limited guidance from national government. While councillors should of course support council staff working under incredibly pressurised conditions, it is vital they ask key questions of council leaders and cabinets regarding decisions over access to new funding, engagement with community groups, the identification of the vulnerable, and the maintenance, expansion and ownership of key services.

5. Actively support mutual aid and other community groups

In the last ten days, hundreds of mutual aid groups have been established across the country in an impressive and inspiring display of grassroots solidarity. Given the gutting of council capacity, these groups have a key role to play. While there have been isolated examples of territorialism and control freakery on the part of some Labour councils, in many places Labour and Momentum councillors have played crucial roles in supporting these groups and in some cases founding them. In Salford, councillors have led the way in establishing the Spirit of Salford initiative, identifying 700 volunteers to be trained, and preparing a food distribution system for vulnerable people. Labour councillors have a responsibility to actively support mutual aid groups, providing any guidance and infrastructure they have at their disposal, ensuring that actions are coordinated with other pre-existing community organisations, groups like ACORN and Labour’s Community Organising Unit, as well as potentially the postal service, and making sure that pre-existing services like foodbanks are sustained and expanded on. Councillors can also play key roles in building trust and assuaging valid concerns about the dissemination of information of undocumented migrants to the government. 

Gutted of funding and powers, and estranged from local communities, councils have increasingly become an epitome of the damage wreaked by neoliberalism on the public realm, and their weakness in 2020 unquestionably puts the UK in a poor position to fight Covid-19. That notwithstanding, due to their links to Labour Party activists, community organisations, and vulnerable people, Labour councillors have a key role to play in the response. Combatting Covid-19 will require massive outlays of funding from central government to councils, which we should not shy away from demanding, but building long-term resilience requires developing initiatives which either establish or strengthen institutions with the potential to empower working people in the long-term, beyond the crisis.